Clash of Crests - Eaters of the Dead

By day the English. By night the eaters of the dead.

Ahmed ibn Fahdlan went north as an emissary and came home a warrior. Bound by a seeress's prophecy to a band of thirteen - the thirteenth of whom could not be a Northman - he followed Buliwyf's heroes to a dying king's hall and a war fought against men by day and monsters by night. This is the account he wrote, that no one in Baghdad believed.

The Campaign - six chapters

• The Thirteenth Man - The Volga runs grey past a Norse trading camp. Ahmed's caravan is gone to Tatar arrows, and only the Northmen stand between him and the steppe.
• The Longhouse in Darkness - The scratching above the roof beams is not the wind. Bones fall through the thatch into the fire, and the first night becomes the first battle.
• Fire Vorm Attack - The burning shapes are not dragons. That is worse. They come down the hillside in a line of fire, and the cattle pens go up.
• Trail of Bones - They do not wander. They have a kingdom. Ambush at the stone circle, ambush at the river crossing, all the way to the cave mouth.
• The Cave of the Eaters - Deeper. Always deeper. Bone chambers, slave pens and a ritual hall where the drums never stop.
• Death of a King - The drums stop. The sun rises. The king does not.

A full Nordic nation

• Hirdmen, berserkers, skalds and shieldmaidens, drafted into any battle in any mode.
• Longship crews and Norse siege engines.
• The wendol as an enemy faction - men in bear skins and skull masks, and the Mother in her deep temple.
• Authored maps for every chapter, from the Volga camp to the bone cave.